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Good morning! Today, the Where Creativity Meets C9 team is joining the Feature Friday posts for Concord and 9th’s Second Birthday Celebration! Today, we are featuring the newest in the phenomenal Turnabout Series: Sprinkles Turnabout! This particular set comes with the main sprinkles image, but it’s also chock full of other awesome little pieces to make some truly amazing and unique cards. The coordinating Sprinkles Tag Die set even includes a super useful tag die that I can’t wait to play around with!

One of the things I absolutely love about the Turnabout line is that you can create such unique cards simply by changing up the color scheme. For this card, I chose to turn the Sprinkles Turnabout four times, using pink, purple, peach, and blue inks to create a very birthday-ish card. This could easily be replicated with a more masculine color scheme…. LOVE when cards can flip flop like that!

After I had stamped my Turnabout, I decided to use the versatile Double Cut Alphabet Dies combined with the lovely scripty Perfectly Penned to create a custom sentiment! I die cut the “calm” and “sprinkles” from black card stock using the Double Cut Alphabet, then added the rest of the greeting using black ink and the Perfectly Penned set. I die cut the little cupcake from the coordinating die set, then stamped it with coordinating ink colors.

I trimmed off the edges and added a raspberry colored cardstock panel behind to bring out the pink sprinkles. I popped up the cupcake with some dimensional adhesive at the top of my greeting, then finally added some shimmer pen and Nuvo Crystal Glaze drops to the die cut letters to add some more texture to the front of the card.

Well, that’s all for me today! I have company for a few days, but I can’t wait to have more time to play with these fantastic new sets. Don’t forget to enter your card into the Where Creativity Meets C9 challenge this month… the theme is Anything Goes, and Concord and 9th has generously donated a $25 gift certificate to the lucky winner! You also have the opportunity to be chosen as a guest designer on a future challenge! Thanks so much for stopping by today… have a marvelous weekend!

Good morning! Today, I have a pair of cards for you, along with a review of some new brushes that I just purchased. If you follow me on Instagram, you may remember that I mentioned purchasing some new synthetic brushes. My favorite brush line, the Black Velvet by Silver Brush Company, is made with both synthetic and squirrel hair, and while I absolutely adore the brushes themselves and the results they produce, it’s never really sat well with me that squirrels had to lose their hair for the purpose of making of my brush. 🙁 So, last week, I purchased a few of the Silverwhite Brushes from Dick Blick to test out, hoping they would be a synthetic alternative to my beloved brushes since they are made by the same company. Today, I’d like to share some initial thoughts on the brushes, as well as my final cards that I created with the watercolored pieces.

For these cards, I used what I think is one of my favorite florals from Altenew, possibly one of my favorite florals ever…. Beautiful Day. The graceful curves of the main floral image…. the perfect little sprigs of foliage…. the bunches of “filler” flowers that work so nicely to fill in the gaps… beautiful. If you only own one floral set (which would be a travesty, but to each his own), I would recommend this one, because it has so many pieces to it. Plus, you can choose to either color or multi-step stamp the main flower. Isn’t that fabulous?

I die cut all of the watercolored pieces with the coordinating dies, then separated them into two groups for two separate cards. For the first card, I used just one of the blooms and some of the foliage, die cut the Pretty Frame die from Papertrey Ink from some linen card stock, and stamped this beautiful sentiment from Ellen Hutson’s Amazing Women stamp set onto some more of the same linen card stock.

For the second card, I used the same watercolored flowers, but arranged them in a large bouquet on my card front, then used the Press ‘n Seal method to pick them up and add dimensional adhesive to the back. I added only a simple die cut “congratulations” (from Papertrey Ink’s Big Basics line), which I also covered in Glossy Accents to add a bit of texture.

A simple layout, but I didn’t want to take away from those pretty blooms.

As for my initial thoughts on the synthetic Silverwhite watercolor brushes. On the whole, I found them to be very similar to the Black Velvet. Some of the things that I really liked: they come to a very fine point, so detail work is fairly simple; they seem to be very sturdy and well made; their price point is considerably lower than the Black Velvet; and (probably the most obvious pro in this list from my perspective) they’re animal friendly. There were a few significant differences between the Black Velvet and the Silverwhite Brushes. First, the synthetic bristles are a bit stiffer than the Black Velvet, which I found made the paper pill more easily when using Hot Press paper. The textured paper that I used today, however, I found to be quite forgiving and very workable with these brushes. The stiffness of the brush required some adjustments in the way I moved the bristles on the paper, as well, because I was used to the very flexible nature of the Black Velvet line, but these adjustments were quite easily managed overall. Because the bristles are white, they do stain quite easily, which may not be a cause for concern to some, but it sometimes gives me pause when I’m switching colors to wonder whether I’ve truly gotten the previous color cleaned off.

The biggest change was the amount of water they hold. I have found that, with my Black Velvet brushes, it takes only a simple dab on my wet absorber to get the excess water off of my brush, making it the perfect level of dampness to pull color out. With the Silverwhites, however, I have to dab two or three times on my wet Absorber to remove a sufficient amount of water from my brush. If I did not initially remove the water, it would release as I was working the color, which in turn created unwanted blooms that had to be siphoned off. Though it takes more time to dab the excess water from the brush on the Absorber, I found that siphoning the unwanted water/color from the paper to be more of a challenge.

On the whole, I found these brushes to be quite easy to use and was very pleased with the results that I was able to achieve. There is definitely a learning curve, but that’s to be expected with anything new, right? My advice is to play until you’re comfortable. Don’t immediately start out with them expecting to paint a masterpiece, but give yourself a little leeway and time to play with them to learn their quirks.

Sorry, guys, I can’t seem to get enough of these stunning new stamps from Wplus9. I stamped and die cut a big old bunch of these flowers and had several left over from my first project (which you can see here), so I decided to make another project with it.

After I had finished stamping the flowers and leaves, I used a circle die that I had lying on my desk to draw a circle in the center of a white card base, then used the same die to die cut a circle from masking paper. I used the circle that I drew on the card base as a guide to arrange the florals, then used Press ‘n Seal to pick them up. While they were stuck to the Press ‘n Seal, I added dimensional adhesive to the back. I adhered the mask to the circled area, then used my foam blending tool to blend Altenew’s Frosty Pink around the edge of the card base, then pulled the mask away to reveal a white circle in the center of the card. I stamped the greeting from Wplus9’s Kind Soul in the center, then adhered the floral wreath, finally adding some pretty sequins to fill in some of the bare spots.

I hope you’re not tired of these pretty stamp sets! It’s been awhile since I just sat and stamped, and it was so fun! Have a marvelous day, friends!

Good morning! Happy Monday! I hope the weather was as beautiful for you as it was here… low humidity, bearable temperatures… gorgeous. I think things are going to go back to more normal July temps this week though. 🙁

I told you last week that I’m fairly obsessed with the new Southern Summer Florals 1 and 2 from the new Wplus 9 release, so much so that I sat down and cranked out two cards in about 1.5 hours (totally doable since hubs had taken the kiddos over to his grandpa’s to ride the tractor! Score!) I loved the first card, which you can see here, created with my limited colors of Oxide inks on colored card stock. Can’t wait to experiment more when the new Oxides come. But this card uses regular dye inks and I love it just as much.

After stamping all of my blooms, I die cut a circle from some A2 sized masking paper using my Double Stitched Circle dies from The Ton. I placed my masking paper on my white card front, then blended Frosty Pink, Coral Berry, and Ruby Red ink from Altenew in an ombre over the masking paper. (A nice little surprise when I pulled up the masking paper: the stitched outer circle was cut so cleanly that the ink blending came through on it, creating a blended stitched border! Not what I was intended, but still a fun development!) I arranged my blooms in a pretty swag, then adhered them using both liquid adhesive and dimensional adhesive.

For the greeting, I die cut Simon Says Stamp’s “miss you” from some plain black card stock, (isn’t that font just stunning?) adhered it, and covered it with (a new to me product) Nuvo Crystal Glaze. I also added some to the black center of the large focal flower to add extra dimension. The final step was to add a few dots of Oyster Grey Nuvo Drops here and there around my floral swag.

Well, that’s all for me today! I am loving these new stamps from Wplus9, and I hope you aren’t sick of seeing them, because I might have another card up my sleeve! 😉 Have a fantastic Monday, friends!

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